For decades wearable displays have been referred to as HMDs (Head Mounted Displays) because of their bulky size and odd appearance, attributable among other things to the micro displays and the conventional refractive and or reflective optics that they employ. These HMD's are large, heavy, and practically impossible to make into fashion eyewear.
The technology for wearable computing has gained in processing power comparable to that of modern desktop computers and is now small enough to fit in the frames of glasses. In addition, optics and display systems for wearable displays have become both smaller in size and higher in resolution to the point where it is possible to place hi-definition (HD) displays and the needed optics in standard glasses-styled frames. With the advances in these technologies, complete operating systems can be incorporated into wearable display systems, creating a new product category, referred to as “smart glasses”; much like the addition of computing power to portable phones, now referred to commonly as “smartphones”.
The compact computing power of smart glasses supports the possibility of loading applications into the smart glasses and running the applications resident in the smart glasses. In addition, such smart glasses can be connected to a smartphone or computer for supporting wearable computing that can be fully cloud connected, with the smartphone, for example, acting as a user interface and running its own application synchronized to the smart glasses. To make this work, there is a need to connect the wearable display to the wearable computer, e.g., smartphone, and then to manage applications that are designed to work on both devices and in concert with each other.
The smart glasses could be arranged to run applications independently or in concert with applications running on their paired (connected) computing devices, e.g., smartphones. Preferably the applications running in both the smartphones and connected computing devices are synchronized or otherwise arranged to work together.
One version of the invention features a computing system for wearable displays. A computer-driven wearable display device incorporates a display engine for presenting virtual images to wearers and a communication and video processor engine including a computer processor, together with an operating system for running applications residing in computer memory, and a communications device for linking the computer processor to external devices. A computer-driven portable display device incorporates a display screen for presenting real images to the wearers of the wearable display device, computing power for running resident applications and communicating with external devices, and a user interface for interacting with the resident applications. An applications management and communication system includes an external manager application residing on the portable display device for managing and launching applications residing on the wearable display device through the user interface of the portable display device.
Another version of the invention features a method of interconnecting a computer-driven wearable display device incorporating a display engine for presenting virtual images to wearers with a computer-driven portable display device incorporating a display screen for presenting real images to the wearers of the wearable display device. The method includes linking applications residing on the wearable display device with applications residing on the portable display device through an external manager application residing on the portable display device, and sending input to one or more of the applications residing on the wearable display device through a user interface residing on the portable display device.